Three is a Magic Number

So we got over our Incident With The Piece Of Pipe.  (See Manic Monday for more details) and Screecher Creature No. 3 was none the worse for his run in with the Piece of Pipe.  And it has to be said, Screecher Creature No. 2 because jumpy jump jump to conclusions mammy here, blamed him before it transpired (through all the bubbling blood) that it was Screecher Creature No. 3’s fault all by his own self.  These things will happen when you run about with a piece of pipe in your trap.  Once all the bleeding stopped (from his nose and throat.  Sounds worse than it actually was but who wants to read about a paper cut?).  Mister Husband tried to tempt the patient to eat a piece of toast.  Not surprisingly he refused.  Hard to eat such things when the back of your throat has been ripped to shreds.  He settled instead for a big bowl of Weetabix with a generous drizzle of honey.  It obviously played on his mind as he referred more than once to “I hurt me” and pointed into his gob.  And so life went on and Thursday rolled round.  I like Thursdays, don’t you? It’s like a poor man’s Friday.  Kind of helps you to tick over until the real weekend starts.  Back in the day BC (Before Childers) Thursday night wasn’t a bad night to get out for a drink.  But for me, these days, Thursday night means catching up on stuff on the player before going to bed.  I also like to take a trip over to my mother’s on Thursday afternoon, for a coffee and a chat.  The Screecher Creatures love it too as sometimes The Treat Lady is there and she always has a Big Brown Bag of trash and they get to pick out a treat.  Pretty much the same thing I did when I was growing up.   They have the run of the place and weather permitting, head outside so we can chat in peace.  I also call it my Weigh In Day and I hop up on the weighing scales to see what damage was created over the last 7 days.  Or sometimes what good was achieved.  I’m getting there, I’m definitely getting there.  But on this day, Screecher Creature No. 3 had another mishap.  We were all suited and booted and ready to go when Screecher Creature No. 3 pulled open the front door telling me to come and look at the plants, that they were growing.  He caught the top of his welly on the door step and went face first down onto the gravel.  How is it that a bang to the head makes so so much blood?  He gave himself a nice little gash on his forehead, nothing that a steri-strip or two didn’t solve, but the blood!  It frightened the life out of him.  It was on his hands, in his eyes, on my clothes, on the floor and later, when I was leaving the house, on the stones.  It took only a minute or two to staunch the bleed but long enough to soak the cloth I used.  And then he started nodding and swaying and I could not keep him awake.  He was asleep sitting up within 10 minutes of his fall.  These days it is ok to let a child sleep after a fall, unless of course they are vomiting or a bit dazed.  He slept for two hours and was the devil to wake up.  Over the next couple of days he enjoyed telling people that mammy pushed him out the door and that’s how he cut his head.  In all fairness, I was doing pretty well up to now.  The older two Screechers have remained unscathed so far so I reckon my record is still pretty blemish free.  And then the smugness stopped.  I am not superstitious in the least but I have heard that things happen in three’s.  So I held my breath.  Every time Mister Husband fired the baby up into the air to make him laugh, I sucked in my breath and glanced at the ceiling to see if he was close to making contact with it.  Every time one of the Awesome Foursome leapt off the fridge freezer and onto the couch, I let a roar that I wasn’t mopping up blood (again!) or putting Sellotape on broken bones.  I won’t mention their habit of slamming doors or throwing large heavy objects about the place.  We had a couple of nights in a row where Doogie Howser aka Screecher Creature No. 3 aka the boy who almost gave himself a DIY tonsillectomy, woke up a few times and refused to go back to sleep.  He was in ok form, too bloody ok.  Game for a laugh he was.  The first night he stayed up for 5 hours.  Five!  Five!  And the following day he was a bit cranky, a bit clingy and a tad sensitive.  Screecher Creature No. 3 has always been described as an affectionate boy.  He loves to give you a hug and a kiss even you’re only leaving the room. But he took it to a whole different level this week.  There was a major, I’m talking nuclear, disaster one day when Mister Husband absent mindedly left for work after lunch without receiving his obligatory hug n’ kiss.  Screecher creature was inconsolable.    He spent the rest of the afternoon either in my arms or on my lap.  On Tuesday at our group, instead of mooching around and interacting with the other kids there, he super glued himself to my side.  He didn’t even attempt to raid the chocolate biscuits.  He snuggled into me and was gearing up for a snooze when I packed them all back into the car and took them home.  He slept for over 2 hours and I put his night owl activities last night down to that super power nap.    And did I say three is a magic number?  This morning there was a lovely discharge dispensing from his right ear.  Ear infection.  Going to the doctor with a broken child three times in 7 days would have been pushing my luck with the people from social services a bit too much! I’m glad I didn’t bring him to the doctor for the slashed throat.  Because there would have been several raised eyebrows over the hole in his head a couple of days later.  Especially when the child was telling people that his mammy pushed him.  I did feel sorry for him though.  He was miserable and out of sorts.  It all made sense this morning.  But now he’s back to his high jinks self.  And in the same way I’ve managed to get to child number three without needing a plaster cast or stitches for any of them, he was the first one to get his hands on my nail varnish at lunch time today.  Thankfully it was the clear stuff.  So, the spell is broken now, right?  The three big bad’s have happened so I can relax? Here’s hoping!